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Let me take you through my dream office

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Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#131

Post by chinathrow »

noir_lord wrote: post #109
chinathrow wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MS Ergo 4000 keyboard and a decent mouse. Currently typing on one of these. I hate the loud clicking noise though, especially with co-workers around me. Are there any similar but less noisy versions of it?

Not that are specifically the same as the 4000, there is the new microsoft ergo keyboard which is quieter but I don't like the key travel. The 4000 isn't really that loud (I found it was louder with the front edge on as it creates a void space under the keyboard like a speaker) especially compared to the mechanical I was using before. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-gb/products/keyboar... I know people w…

Thank you - now if only the numblock would be attached :)

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#132

Post by dhimes »

mseebach wrote: post #119
mgkimsal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This evergreen topic comes up enough that there will always be multiple sides to this topic. I've gone so far in past threads to imply that other devs were "wrong" about being more productive in open office plans, and got bashed for that. "Don't tell me how I'm more productive", etc. There may never actually be hard data on this, because it's, at core, likely very hard to measure, but I'd love to read some research/f…

I think there are at least two different kinds of productivity. One is the kind where you need to progress through a non-trivial body of work with a well-understood end-state. Your primary, if not sole, output is code. This is probably well suited for private offices and remote teams. The other is where you're solving a problem that isn't in the first order a code problem. There are typically humans involved in these…

There are also people other than coders in tech companies. I'm next door to a sales group for a tech company. They do a lot of yelling.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#133

Post by wolly »

mseebach wrote: post #119
mgkimsal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This evergreen topic comes up enough that there will always be multiple sides to this topic. I've gone so far in past threads to imply that other devs were "wrong" about being more productive in open office plans, and got bashed for that. "Don't tell me how I'm more productive", etc. There may never actually be hard data on this, because it's, at core, likely very hard to measure, but I'd love to read some research/f…

I think there are at least two different kinds of productivity. One is the kind where you need to progress through a non-trivial body of work with a well-understood end-state. Your primary, if not sole, output is code. This is probably well suited for private offices and remote teams. The other is where you're solving a problem that isn't in the first order a code problem. There are typically humans involved in these…

Unfortunately I think personal productivity overall in industry is less of a factor than people suggest. Everyone wants have high pay, use exciting technologies, work in comfort etc. but they don't see the bigger picture.

Investing in people at the end of they day has to make sense, otherwise other companies will out compete you. When it's hard to determine people skills, work varies highly in intensity, projects fail for any number of reasons, people don't stay very long at even the most "comfortable" companies etc. the personal productivity of any employee becomes marginal, at least in the lower ranks. This is true for most "craft" industries like newspapers, fashion or design.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#134

Post by majewsky »

noir_lord wrote: post #57
jay_kyburz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested to hear what hardware you will buy. What's your ideal hardware? Just a MBP or something more interesting?

Was offered a tricked out iMac or similar but I'm a linux user through and through so I'll self-build. Current plan is Ryzen 1700(possibly X)/32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, board supports 4 slots so can upgrade if needed) (going to need a lot of virtualisation capability to handle dealing with multiple legacy systems, windows for interop and 8 cores with 16 threads at that price is a hard match from Intel), 500GB SSD with 1TB WD…

> I'll move to a standing desk but I'll build that myself since I know exactly what I want (I built my current one) down the line.

Interesting. Something like that would be absolutely impossible here in Germany. I recall that we weren't allowed to buy any furniture from Ikea because office furniture must be certified to a certain level of fire-resistance, and Ikea doesn't bother with those certifications. There are dedicated vendors for office furniture for that reason.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#135

Post by TheCoelacanth »

tolien wrote: post #62
bigzen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay you have my interest. Could you expand on why you would like to see desktops with laptops for a VM? Would the laptop borrowing happen on a night by night basis? Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home. Genuinely curious as to why you think this would be better. (more cost effective, better office env, etc.)

Not the OP, but: > Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home Maybe, but there's two issues here - they're either taking them for personal use, or they're taking them to do (additional) work on. In the majority of cases, you probably don't want to encourage either of these (in the same way you wouldn't encourage someone to stay in the office till 3 am). There's probably a group (on-call, not a…

There are other reasons to take a laptop home. For instance, at my workplace, the night before snow is predicted, nearly every single person will want to take their laptop home so that they can work from home the next day if it snows. If your laptop pool is smaller than the number of employees, there won't be enough laptops to go around.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#136

Post by majewsky »

smikhanov wrote: post #70
tckr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is exactly my point. We have shitty offices, because they are build to suit the real estate market not productivity. But there are examples which are horrible by design, and not because the property value was important: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/30... (first pic)

The employer's financial cost of the lost productivity of an average developer in an open space office is much lower than developers like to think, and much, much lower than the cost of the office with private rooms. By placing people in the open space, companies pay almost three times less in office rental costs ( https://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices-creati... ). In other words, unless you're Sebast…

> your company doesn't care (and rightly so) about your lost productivity because it just simply doesn't matter.

The lost productivity of a single person might indeed not matter much if the corp is big enough, but since everyone is sitting in the open-plan office, we're actually talking about maybe 10-20% productivity loss across all employees, which even for a big corp is quite massive.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#137

Post by mseebach »

dhimes wrote: post #132
mseebach wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are at least two different kinds of productivity. One is the kind where you need to progress through a non-trivial body of work with a well-understood end-state. Your primary, if not sole, output is code. This is probably well suited for private offices and remote teams. The other is where you're solving a problem that isn't in the first order a code problem. There are typically humans involved in these…

There are also people other than coders in tech companies. I'm next door to a sales group for a tech company. They do a lot of yelling.

Yes, I agree that co-locating teams that aren't directly collaborating can be counterproductive. Loud sales teams, obviously, yes, but quieter teams will also have different patterns of buzz that will be disturbing to unrelated teams near them.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#138

Post by wolly »

imgabe wrote: post #126

I like the concept of the shared 3-person offices. I think that's a good size. As someone who works professionally designing offices (as an engineer, but working with architects and interior designers) let me bring up a few practical considerations. 1. Accessibility. Offices have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities act. This includes requirements determining how wide passageways have to be. So having a wal…

> I like the concept of the shared 3-person offices.

I don't. This seem like a smaller version of an open office. Everyone has someone in their field of view, plus there's a TV and large glass windows with couches directly outside of them. That seem like a great way to get a little bit distracted all the time. Three people in one office is usually much worse than two people in a smaller office. Since if one person does something distracting, they are distracting the other two people. And when two people want to talk about something they are distracting the third person.

What the author describes seem more like "not having to go to meetings" or "not being bothered by management" than actually being able to work undisturbed for a predictable period of time.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#139

Post by Arizhel »

jedanbik wrote: post #9
Arizhel wrote: post #5

This has a lot of problems. First, legal problems: you can't have a unisex multi-stall bathroom in the USA. I'm not sure if it's actually illegal (it probably is in many states), but it'll never fly even if it is. Honestly, what you really need is a male restroom that's about 5 times the size of the female restroom. Again, that won't fly politically, but practically it makes sense because there's so few women in soft…

We have plenty of unisex multi-stall bathrooms here in Durham, NC -- most of them started out as a statement of solidarity against HB2.

Unless those "stalls" are actually separate rooms with locking doors, I don't see how that's legal, in light of repiret's post here citing US code that specifically forbids it.

Honestly, I have a hard time seeing such bathrooms ever being commonplace; it seems like the people who design and build buildings just love having stalls with crappy little partitions that end 12 inches above the floor so you can peek into the neighboring stalls. You can't have that in a multi-sex bathroom for obvious reasons.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#140

Post by Arizhel »

ashark wrote: post #7
Arizhel wrote: post #5

This has a lot of problems. First, legal problems: you can't have a unisex multi-stall bathroom in the USA. I'm not sure if it's actually illegal (it probably is in many states), but it'll never fly even if it is. Honestly, what you really need is a male restroom that's about 5 times the size of the female restroom. Again, that won't fly politically, but practically it makes sense because there's so few women in soft…

> First, legal problems: you can't have a unisex multi-stall bathroom in the USA. I'm not sure if it's actually illegal (it probably is in many states), but it'll never fly even if it is. Granted it's not the same as an office bathroom, but I know of at least one mid-price but trendyish restaurant with a unisex multi stall bathroom here. And I'm in surprised-we-don't-have-a-trans-bathroom-bill-yet Missouri.

Are these stalls typical stalls with a huge gap at the floor so you can see the neighbors as they sit on the pot? Are they actual separate rooms?

I've been in a few nice restaurants where the "stalls" were actually separate walled, tiled rooms with nice wooden doors with locks. Those bathrooms are a real joy to use compared to standard public restrooms. The darker tiles and wood and dimmer lighting and nice fixtures are also really nice. While the ones I was in were not unisex, I could see how that would work just fine, since the only area shared is the area with the sinks.

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